Sometimes we need something to shake us in order to wake us from the fantasy that we have been living in. Hopefully, this COVID-19 pandemic will serve as a wake up call for people all over the globe, because it has given us a very clear preview of what we can expect during the years ahead. This pandemic has shown us that our economic and financial systems are not nearly as stable as most people thought, many of our politicians have been quite eager to embrace socialism and tyranny during this pandemic, and acute shortages of basic essentials started to happen very rapidly once fear of COVID-19 began to sweep across the nation. If things degenerated this much during a relatively minor crisis like this COVID-19 pandemic, what in the world is our society going to look like once a major crisis hits us? (Read More...)

Even though most U.S. states have begun the process of “reopening” their economies, the unprecedented tsunami of job losses that we have been experiencing just continues to roll on. On Thursday, we learned that another 2.4 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits during the previous week, and that brings the grand total for this pandemic to a whopping 38.6 million. To get an idea of just how badly this swamps what we witnessed during the last recession, take a look at this chart. This is the biggest spike in unemployment in all of U.S. history by a very wide margin, and analysts are expecting another huge number once again next week. (Read More...)

Initially, we were told that the coronavirus lockdowns would just “temporarily” disrupt the U.S. economy, but now it is becoming clear that a lot of the damage will be permanent. We are starting to see businesses go belly up all over the country, and this includes some of the most iconic names in the retail world. When J.C. Penney announced that it would be declaring bankruptcy and closing hundreds of stores, I warned that would just be the tip of the iceberg, and that has definitely turned out to be the case. In fact, on Wednesday many analysts were absolutely shocked when news broke that Victoria’s Secret has decided to shut down about 250 stores… (Read More...)

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.” That is a direct quote from Benjamin Franklin, and it has turned out to be quite prophetic. Today, most of our politicians are socialists whether they accept that label or not, and the American people have come to expect the government “to do something for them” whenever any sort of a crisis comes along. In response to this COVID-19 pandemic, Congress has borrowed and spent trillions more dollars that we do not have, and most Americans have been quite thrilled to receive their “stimulus checks”. But of course now a lot of people are insisting that those checks were not enough and they want more. In fact, one new survey just found that most Americans want the checks to keep coming. The idea of “free money” is so seductive, but unfortunately most of the population simply does not understand that eventually there is a great price to be paid for throwing “free money” around. (Read More...)

Can anyone explain how we are going to motivate unemployed workers to go back to work when most of them can actually make more money camped on their sofas watching Netflix? Over the past couple of months, 36.5 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits, and Congress understandably wanted to do something to address this unprecedented spike in unemployment. But by giving all of these unemployed workers a repeating 600 dollar bonus on top of existing unemployment benefits, Congress has actually created a very powerful incentive for Americans to be unemployed and to stay unemployed for as long as the bonuses last. According to a group of prominent economists at the University of Chicago, 68 percent of those that are currently unemployed can now bring home more money than when they were actually employed… (Read More...)

The last recession was really, really bad, but it was never like this. It is time for us to face reality, and that means admitting that the U.S. economy has plunged into a depression. This is already the worst economic downturn that America has experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and we are right in the middle of the largest spike in unemployment in all of U.S. history by a very wide margin. Of course it was fear of COVID-19 that burst our economic bubble, and fear of this virus is going to be with us for a very long time to come. So we need to brace ourselves for an extended economic crisis, and at this point even Time Magazine is openly referring to this new downturn as an “economic depression”. Needless to say, there will be a tremendous amount of debate about how deep it will eventually become, but everyone should be able to agree that our nation hasn’t seen anything like this since before World War II. (Read More...)

Many have been warning for years that our economic bubble would eventually burst and that a collapse was inevitably coming, but the ferocity of this new economic crisis has caught just about everyone off guard. And even though some states have been attempting to “reopen” their economies in recent days, the job loss tsunami just continues to roll on. Prior to this year, the all-time record for the most new unemployment claims in a single week was 695,000. That record was set all the way back in 1982, and it had survived all the way until 2020. But now we have been absolutely dwarfing that number week after week. On Thursday, we learned that another 2.9 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits last week, and that brings the grand total for this pandemic to more than 36 million… (Read More...)